Summary
On a night when the focus was on safety and unity at the Republican convention, a number of GOP leaders also offered up some misleading and false claims we have seen before.
- Several people described “dramatic increases” in crime under President Joe Biden, as House Speaker Mike Johnson put it. But FBI and other crime data show that violent crime and murders have decreased under Biden.
- Republican National Committee Co-Chair Lara Trump said African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans and women all had “record low unemployment rates” under former President Donald Trump, ignoring the fact that most of those lows were surpassed or matched under Biden.
- Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake falsely claimed that Rep. Ruben Gallego recently “voted to let the millions of people who poured into our country illegally cast a ballot in this upcoming election.” Gallego voted against a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. A 1996 federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting.
- House Majority Leader Steve Scalise parroted the unfounded claim, repeated so often by Trump, that other countries’ “prisons are being emptied” and the inmates sent to the U.S. border.
- Rep. Elise Stefanik claimed that Trump had delivered “the most secure border in our nation’s history.” That’s inaccurate. Illegal border crossings, as measured by apprehensions at the southwest border, were 14.7% higher in Trump’s final year compared with the year before he took office.
- Lara Trump also talked about “our energy independence” under Trump. While the U.S. became a net energy producer and exporter late in Trump’s presidency, that has continued during the Biden administration.
Several speakers also blamed Biden for high inflation — Stefanik called it “Biden-flation.” We wrote about that claim in our story on the first night of the convention, saying that economists point to the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic as the primary reason for higher inflation.
Analysis
Crime
Several speakers falsely claimed or suggested violent crime had increased under President Joe Biden. Violent crime and murders nationwide have gone down, according to FBI and other crime data. Figures from the Major Cities Chiefs Association show an 8.6% decline in murders in 69 large U.S. cities from 2020, the year before Biden took office, to 2023, as we’ve written before.
In former President Donald Trump’s last year in office — 2020 — murders and violent crime went up, and there was a smaller increase the following year, Biden’s first year in office. But since then, murders and violent crime have been dropping.
But that’s not the picture several convention speakers painted. House Speaker Mike Johnson said, “We can’t survive the dramatic increases in violence, crime and drugs that the Democrats’ policies have brought upon our communities.” Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri said that “the rule of law has disintegrated” under Biden and “crime is rampant.”
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said that his city “bucked national trends and achieved a remarkable three straight years of violent crime reduction.” The city did buck the national trend in 2021, when violent crime and murders went up overall. But Dallas’ violent crime reduction in 2022 and 2023 mirrors the national trend. (The number of murders in the city actually went up in 2023, according to Dallas’ crime analytics dashboard.)
In campaign rallies, Trump, too, has falsely claimed the country is seeing rising crime, and earlier this year, he called the FBI data that contradicted him “fake numbers.”
The FBI 2022 annual report showed a slight decline in the nationwide murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate of 0.5 points from 2020, the year before Biden took office, to 2022. The violent crime rate dropped by 15.4 points, to 369.8 per 100,000 population in 2022. (For these figures, see Table 1 in the CIUS Estimations download for the crime in the U.S. reports.) The FBI figures are based on voluntary reports by agencies nationwide.
Preliminary FBI figures for 2023 and the first quarter of 2024 show further declines in violent crimes and murders. We won’t have the official 2023 report for a few more months.
Other reports show crime declining in 2023 and continuing to do so this year. The latest figures from the Major Cities Chiefs Association show a 10.4% decline in the number of murders from 2022 to 2023 in 69 large U.S. cities. Rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults also went down. Figures for the first quarter of 2024 indicate that violent crimes dropped again, compared with the same time period last year.
Figures compiled by AH Datalytics, an independent criminal justice data analysis group, show a 17.5% reduction in murders in more than 200 U.S. cities so far this year, compared with the same point in 2023.
‘Record Low Unemployment Rates’
Lara Trump, the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, said there were “record low unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans and women” during her father-in-law’s presidency. But unemployment rates for three of those demographics were lower, or as low, under Biden.
African Americans: Under Trump, the lowest unemployment rate for African Americans was 5.3% in August 2019 – the lowest rate on record at that time, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data going back to 1972. But under Biden, the unemployment rate for African Americans reached a new low of 4.8% in April 2023.
Hispanic Americans: The unemployment rate for Hispanics also went down to a new low of 3.9% under Trump, according to BLS data going back to 1973. But the lowest Hispanic unemployment under Biden was also 3.9% in September 2022, tying the record during the Trump administration.
Women: For women, the lowest unemployment rate under Trump was 3.4%, and the lowest rate under Biden was 3.3%. Neither is lower than the record of 2.7% in May 1953 during the Eisenhower administration.
Asian Americans: Trump still has the record for the lowest unemployment rate for Asian Americans — 2% in June 2019, although BLS data for the Asian population only go back to 2003. The lowest the rate has been under Biden was 2.3% in July 2023.
Lake’s False Claim About Gallego
Kari Lake, who is running against Rep. Ruben Gallego in Arizona’s Senate race, falsely claimed that last week he “voted to let the millions of people who poured into our country illegally cast a ballot in this upcoming election.”
Gallego was one of the 198 Democrats who voted against the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or SAVE Act, which passed the House of Representatives on July 10 in a mostly party-line vote. The bill, which was introduced by House Republicans, primarily requires voters to provide proof of citizenship at the time they register to vote in federal elections.
But a “no” vote wouldn’t mean that people in the U.S. illegally can vote, as Lake wrongly claimed. A federal law enacted in 1996 already prohibits anyone but U.S. citizens from voting in elections at the federal level. Instances of noncitizens voting are rare, and violators can be fined and/or imprisoned for up to one year.
“Of course only U.S. citizens should vote,” Gallego said in a statement about his vote against the SAVE Act, which is opposed by Biden and unlikely to pass the Senate. “But this bill isn’t about that, it’s about making it harder for Arizonans to vote, including married women, servicemembers, Native Arizonans, seniors, and people with disabilities.”
Scalise’s Unfounded Claim about ‘Prisons Being Emptied’
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise parroted the unfounded claim, repeated so often by Trump, that other countries’ “prisons are being emptied” and the inmates sent to the U.S. border.
“Biden and Harris opened it [the border] up to the entire world,” Scalise said. “Prisons are being emptied.”
Virtually every campaign speech Trump has delivered for more than a year has included some version of the unsupported claim that countries around the world are “emptying out their prisons, insane asylums and mental institutions and sending their most heinous criminals to the United States.” As we have reported, immigration experts say they have not seen any evidence to support that claim.
Trump has provided scant evidence to support it. In June, we looked into Trump’s claim as it relates to Venezuela, because Trump has repeatedly cited a drop in crime as evidence for countries emptying their prisons and sending inmates to the U.S. It’s true that reported crime is trending down in Venezuela, but crime experts in the country say there are numerous reasons for that — including an enormous emigration of citizens and a consolidation of gang activity — and they have nothing to do with sending criminals to the U.S.
Roberto Briceño-León, founder and director of the independent Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, told us poverty has also played a role.
“Crime is reduced in Venezuela due to a reduction in crime opportunities: bank robberies disappear because there is no money to steal; kidnappings are reduced because there is no cash to pay ransoms; robberies on public transportation cease because travelers have no money in their pockets and old, worthless cell phones; and assaults on bank money dispensers disappear because the cash they can give to their clients has not exceeded twenty US dollars,” Briceño-León said.
Some criminals have left Venezuela “seeking to continue their criminal life in other places where they find greater opportunities for profit,” he said, but the vast majority of emigrants from Venezuela are “honest workers fleeing the country’s poverty, looking for a job and a better future.”
“We have no evidence that the Venezuelan government is emptying the prisons or mental hospitals to send them out of the country, whether to the USA or any other country,” Briceño-León said.
“This claim has come up repeatedly about various countries,” Julia Gelatt, associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute, told us. “While the actions of institutions in Venezuela is not our specialty, we are unaware of any action by Venezuelan authorities (or those of any other country) to empty its jails and prisons or its mental-health institutions to send criminals or people with mental-health issues to the U.S.”
‘Most Secure Border’ Talking Point
Rep. Elise Stefanik, who is the House Republican Conference chair, claimed that Trump would “once again deliver the most secure border in our nation’s history.” It’s a popular talking point — one that the former president made in his debate against Biden. But it’s inaccurate.
As we wrote in “Trump’s Final Numbers,” illegal border crossings, as measured by apprehensions at the southwest border, were 14.7% higher in Trump’s final year compared with 2016 — the last full year before Trump took office.
After dropping dramatically in Trump’s first year in office to a level not seen since at least before 2000, the number of apprehensions began to rise in Trump’s second year. Apprehensions peaked under Trump in 2019, when nearly 800,000 people were caught trying to enter the U.S. illegally at the southern border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection monthly data spanning fiscal years 2019 and 2020. That was higher than any year going back to 2007, and was higher than any year during President Barack Obama’s two terms in office, based on our review of monthly CBP data.
In 2020, aided in part by the pandemic, numbers fell from the 2019 totals, but they were still higher than all but one of Obama’s eight years.
Trump didn’t deliver on his campaign promise to build a 1,000-mile-long wall along the southwest border. Nonetheless, a substantial amount of fencing was constructed — mostly to replace dilapidated or outdated primary or secondary fencing. There were 458 miles of “border wall system” built during Trump’s term, including 373 miles of replacement barriers, according to a January 2021 Customs and Border Protection status report.
More Energy Independence Claims
While continuing to talk about “what life actually looked like” under Trump, Lara Trump said the U.S. had “our energy independence,” suggesting that is no longer the case under Biden.
For starters, as we’ve written, the U.S. was never 100% energy self-sufficient, under Trump. The country continued to import foreign sources of energy, including oil.
During the Trump administration, the U.S. did produce more energy than it consumed and export more energy, including petroleum, than it imported. It had been decades since that last happened, according to the Energy Information Administration.
But since Biden has been president, the U.S. has continued to be a net energy producer and a net energy exporter. Also, the U.S. is producing record amounts of crude oil and natural gas under Biden, contrary to claims that his policies have “crushed” American energy.
Clarification, July 17: In our item on the SAVE Act, we incorrectly referred once to “the bill’s defeat.” As we correctly reported elsewhere in the item, the SAVE Act passed the House. We also clarified that the bill is unlikely to pass the Senate.
Clarification, July 24: We added information on preliminary FBI crime figures for 2023 and the first quarter of 2024. That information was available when we published this story, but we did not include it.
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